War Crimes - Spokesman Books

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Editorial
War Crimes
On the 3rd April 2007, the Russian News Agency, Novosti, reported a statement by
Yuri Baluyevsky, the head of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff. He warned
that ‘Washington needs to think twice before launching a military campaign
against Tehran, as such an attack would have global implications’. The General
said that it might be realistic to anticipate that the Americans could inflict damage
on Iran’s military and industrial potential: ‘but winning the war is unachievable –
its reverberations would be heard across the world’.
General Baluyevsky said that when deciding upon military action against Iran,
the US leadership should bear in mind the negative experience it had garnered in
other countries of the region. He warned that if the US goes to war with Iran as
well as Afghanistan and Iraq ‘the world may see America decline as the world’s
mightiest and most powerful state’.
Other Russian spokesmen had previously warned of possible American air
strikes on April 6th, Good Friday.1 There have also been repeated warnings by
critics of the regime in Washington, not so specific, but pointing up strong
possibilities of such military initiatives.2
White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, denied all these stories at a news
briefing on Monday 2nd April. The news had been widely reported that the
American aircraft carrier, Nimitz, with a supporting flotilla of lesser ships, was
bound for the Persian Gulf to join other aircraft carrier strike groups already
hovering there. The American military claimed that the presence of two major
carriers in the Gulf was ‘intended to demonstrate US “resolve to build regional
security and bring long term stability to the region”.’
Previously fifteen British sailors and marines had been detained by Iranian
forces, when they were alleged to be operating in Iranian territorial waters.3 This
allegation had been strenuously, even belligerently, denied by Tony Blair,
although Craig Murray, the former Ambassador in Tashkent, who was victimised
by the Foreign Office for undiplomatically speaking up for human rights in
Uzbekistan, offered rather compelling testimony to show that arguments about the
positioning of the frontier between Iraqi and Iranian territorial waters were
somewhat metaphysical in nature.
Before his time in Tashkent, Mr. Murray spent several years in a basement in
Whitehall, seeking to determine maritime boundaries for the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office. He had been personally responsible in the Embargo
Surveillance Centre for getting ‘individual real time clearance for the Royal Navy
to board specific vessels in these waters’. He says of the present dispute:
‘As I feared, Blair adopted the stupid and confrontational approach of publishing maps
ignoring the boundaries dispute, thus claiming a very blurred situation is crystal clear
and the Iranians totally in the wrong.’
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Mr. Murray continues:
‘Tony Blair’s contempt for Middle Eastern lives has already been adequately
demonstrated in Iraq and Lebanon. His lack of genuine concern for British servicemen
is demonstrated by his steadfast refusal to meet even one parent of a dead British
serviceman or woman killed in the wars he created.’
Apparently the boundary line between the waters of Iraq and Iran is based upon
an extrapolation of the boundary which divides the Shatt Al-Arab Waterway. This
boundary shifts with the shifting banks of the Waterway itself, so that manifestly
its extension can be subject to important variations. As Murray tells us, the Stars
and Stripes magazine (October 24th 2006) reports:
‘Bumping into the Iranians cannot be helped in the Northern Persian Gulf, where the lines
between Iraqi and Iranian territorial water are blurred … No maritime border has been
agreed upon by the two countries, explained Royal Australian Navy Commodore Peter
Lockwood, the Commander of the Combined Task Force in the Northern Persian Gulf.’
None of these considerations inhibited the rhetoric of Mr. Blair. President Bush,
however, was even less restrained. He called the detainees ‘hostages’, a term
which not even the British had evoked.
At the time of writing, although we are very agnostic about the anticipated
Good Friday aerial bombardment of Iran, and although we remain hopeful of a
diplomatic solution to the argument about the detention of British military
personnel, it is clear that events are very mobile, and that rationality dawns very
much in fits and starts among some of the senior personnel. Is there any evidence
that the British diplomats and top military brass have been able to restrain Mr.
Blair, or lock him in a cellar until the dispute is satisfactorily settled? Fortunately,
he will soon be gone, but these contemporary crises do show that we remain in
rather dire danger right up to the actual point of his departure.
For a long time we have tended towards the opinion that the extension of
American hostilities into Iran was improbable for the very reason given by Yuri
Baluyevsky. Even if the realities of the power balance may elude President Bush,
it is perfectly evident that large numbers of senior American statesmen, not to say
Generals and diplomats, have a greatly more realistic appreciation of the balance
of military force. Long ago, we reported the judicious assessment of General
Odom, of the effects of the American conquest of Iraq, which, he said, had
strengthened America’s enemies, revived Al Qaeda, and made Iran the
unchallenged power in the region.
Even if the weight of informed opinion in Washington may not be quite enough
to cancel the aggravated imbecility of the man in the White House, there is the
further weight of America’s allies. Saudi Arabia, in particular, is expressing open
criticism of war talk against Iran. If the neo-cons were to succeed in unleashing
the malnourished dogs of their wars on Tehran, they could wind up not only
strengthening the Iranians, but fatally undermining their long-term Middle Eastern
allies.
There was once a time when a famous strategist declared that ‘imperialism and
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all reactionaries are paper tigers’. We took leave to doubt this presumption when
it was fashionable in some places. But due to the exertions of Mr Bush, ably
assisted by Mr. Blair, it almost begins to be true.
We are about to see the end of the Blair administration. The elections at the
beginning of May 2007 give rise to dismal forecasts about the prospects for the
Labour Party, and it is generally presumed that the Prime Minister will make his
farewells shortly after those elections, while there may remain two or three
supporters to whom he can bid goodbye. Our grief will not be measureless, and
many people may even share in the sense of relief which will accompany Mr.
Blair’s departure.
But a judicious assessment of the events which have given rise to this dismal
balance sheet will most probably reflect the wisdom of the title chosen by Judge
Thomas of the Supreme Court of New Zealand, for his magisterial paper. We have
been persuaded to publish this text, because it is not only ‘an indictment of Tony
Blair’, but also because it documents ‘the failure of the political process’ which has
given rise to the horrors in Iraq, and a major crisis of confidence in Government and
democratic institutions more widely. Where does the writ of the democratic process
run, when that process has been so widely travestied, ignored, and even violated?
The cogent case for impeachment of the Prime Minister was made in England
by a group of British Parliamentarians, led by the spokesmen of the Welsh and
Scottish Nationalist Parties. A debate was secured by Plaid Cymru and the
Scottish National Party, and supported by a cross-Party coalition of members. One
hundred and sixty-four signatures were obtained for Early Day Motion 1088,
Conduct of Government Policy in Relation to the War against Iraq. Among these
were thirty-three Labour members, sixty Conservatives and fifty-nine Liberal
Democrats. Adam Price MP explained the thinking behind this motion:
‘Three and a half years on and Iraq is mired in blood, and the shocking figures published
recently show that the death toll has reached 655,000. Neither the Hutton nor Butler
Inquiries addressed the question if the Parliament and country were misled into this
bloody conflict. I believe that it is essential for the credibility of our democracy that we
establish what combination of deception, delusion and ineptitude carried us down this
fateful path.
This debate is not about revisiting old ground, it is an urgent attempt to restore the
balance of power between Parliament and the Executive; and of the utmost
contemporary relevance if we are to prevent such tragedies from happening again. It
will probably be the first and last occasion to restore proper accountability of
Government.’
He was supported by Alex Salmond, SNP Leader:
‘This debate offers MPs a second chance – a chance to re-establish Parliamentary
accountability over an executive who has led the country into a bloody quagmire – and
a last chance to change strategy and direction on the disastrous course of events in Iraq.
If this motion carries – or indeed even if it records a substantial shift in opinion since
the vote which took us to war – Mr. Blair’s time in Downing Street will be numbered in
days, not weeks or months.’
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War Crimes
The text of the motion is based on Early Day Motion 1088:
‘That this House believes that there should be a select committee of seven honourable
Members, being members of Her Majesty’s Privy Council, to review the way in which
the responsibilities of government were discharged in relation to Iraq and all matters
relevant thereto, in the period leading up to military action in that country in March 2003
and in its aftermath.’
But here we now have the considered opinion of a senior Judge from New
Zealand, who, weighing every word, offers us conclusions and refreshing candour
long missing in British official pronouncements.
‘I believe that the forty-five minute claim had to be a knowing lie’. How many
British Ministers and senior public servants must have known this? How many
Judges must have swallowed deeply, and found more decorous descriptions to cover
it? And how many British people have pondered the implications in deep frustration?
Deliberate lies at the head of Government annul the foundations of trust by the
governed, and lower all official thinking to new levels of duplicity and hypocrisy.
Judge Thomas has laid down a powerful challenge. ‘The shortcomings in the
political process are self-evident’, he says, ‘in that the Prime Minister was not
constrained from committing the above political, immoral and illegal
misdemeanours, nor has he been held accountable for them.’
Until accountability is reimposed, we cannot re-establish honest, political
discourse. Evidently politicians have told lies before. But now we live with
untruths that cannot be corrected, with falsehoods that have become official.
Where the lie rules, logic itself gives way to unreason.
Ken Coates
Footnotes
1 Colonel General Leonid Ivashov, Vice President of the Academy of Geo-political
Sciences, warned that ‘The Pentagon is planning to deliver a massive air strike on Iran’s
military infrastructure in the near future’. Andre Uglanov reported in Arguments and
Facts that he expected an onslaught from various bases, including Diego Garcia and the
aircraft carriers currently deployed in the Persian Gulf. He cited Ivashov as anticipating
an American attack, ‘or more precisely a violent action against Iran’.
2 See, notably, the recent statements by Seymour Hersh and Scott Ritter.
3 Since these words were written, a dramatic announcement was made by President
Ahmadinejad at the end of a discourse on recent foreign policy developments. He
ceremonially decorated the Revolutionary Guards who had captured the fifteen British
sailors and marines, and then announced their imminent and unconditional release. They
had been pardoned he said, in commemoration of the birthday of the prophet Muhammad,
of Easter, and of the Passover. Kitted out with new suits presented by the Iranian
authorities, the fifteen, laden with presents, were flown out of Tehran the next morning.
Mr. Blair celebrated the return of the British captives with a number of ungracious
remarks, implying but not alleging that other servicemen and women who had been killed
that day owed their deaths to Iranian weaponry. The evidence for this proposition has not
yet been produced, and it may well be found alongside the weapons of mass destruction
which took Britain to war against Iraq four bloodthirsty years ago.